Paperless office - how did we do?

Our paperless office experiment has been finished for just over two weeks now, so how did we do? Am I still managing to keep the office paper free?

As much as I have tried not to let paper back into my life a bit seems to have snuck in. There is a pile of invoices that need to be dealt with on my desk, which annoyingly takes up some of the lovely space I have become accustomed to. The book keeping side of the business was always going to be the hardest part of this task. Not everyone has got on board with email invoicing yet. I am however delighted with the receipt wallet software which we bought that enables us to combine the filing of paper and paper free invoices.

The white boards have been the best purchase ever. It's so easy to brainstorm on them and there is always one handy to take down a phone message, an order or just a crazy idea when I have one. I certainly won't be trying to live without them and they have continued to completely remove the need for post it notes.

My iPod has been invaluable too, although at times I'm sure people mistook my note taking for tweeting or texting. I haven't been so organised as to write up my notes instantly when I come home but it has certainly cut down on the clutter that would usually accumulate in my bag. I'm getting used to pulling out my iPod to make a note rather than my notebook which was in constant use before the experiment. Being paper free has also made me a lot more organised, working with the iCal programme which syncs with my iPod has kept me on top of all the meetings and events I have scheduled better than a paper diary could. My computer even emails me reminders the day before so I have no excuse for forgetting anything.

Paper Diary

I've been rather sporadic with my paper diary for the last few weeks. It's hard to find something new to write about keeping paper out of my life. So please excuse the big gap...

Day 15
Wednesday 11th March
I was in training today, a course on PR and media which was great. The usual sheet of paper and pen greeted me when I got in the door but I pushed it out of temptations way. I am getting slightly behind with taking the notes from my iPod but it still beats finding wadges of paper in the bottom of bags and in cars weeks or months later.

In the evening I went to a Speed Networking event, like speed dating but without the kissing! I have been allowing myself business cards during this fast which is just as well because speed networking is all about business cards. I met some great people and managed not to pick up any extra bits of paper during the evening. Maybe one day there will be some sort of virtual business card that we can just send by Bluetooth to someones PDA or iPhone but for now we’re going to have to stick to the physical type.

Day 16
Thursday 12th March
Today I started to follow some paperless office people on Twitter, a quick search for the term ‘paperless office’ turned up several results. I’ve found some interesting articles too through Twitter all of which have me wanting to explore more technological solutions to working without paper. I need to find out more about electronic signatures and how to use them.

Follow Feelgood Organic Hampers on Twitter
Follow Hamperlady (that's me!) on Twitter

Day 30
Thursday 26th of March
Feelgood Organic Hampers has decided to enter the Carlow Chamber of Commerce Business Awards, a process that involves much filling of application forms. Thankfully the Chamber sent us out email copies without us even having to ask so we have been able to submit our application without the use of paper. This is especially pertinant in this case as we are going for the 'Corporate Social Responsibility' award and part of our submission mentiones our lenten paper fast. I have found using the white wipe boards invaluable in this process. They are a great brainstorming tool and not as easy to loose as scraps of paper. You will see in my picture the amount of scrawling that was done!

My desk still remains resonably empty. I can't stress how much this has helped my productivity I don't think you realise how much clutter slows you down until you get rid of it.

Day 36
Wednesday 1st April
I am going to London to the Natural & Organic Products trade show this weekend. It's the show where I pretty much decide o which products I'm going to buy for the next season. This could be one of the biggest challenge yet. Flying without a paper boarding card is impossible. I have two options, check in online and print my own ticket or check in at the airport and get a boarding card printed there. I can't work out which is best or worst for the environment. I suppose if I print it at home at least it will be printed on 100% post consumer waste paper.

I always seem to come home from this show with bags and bags of paper, wherever you go there are people virtually throwing the stuff at you and sometimes you just take it in order to escape an over zealous salesperson. It's good to be going in with the strong resolution not to accept it this time. If there is a product I'm interested in I will make a note on my iPod and ask them to email me their marketing material. This will of course mean that my inbox will be jammed in the weeks following the show but when I bring home a bag of paper, the truth is I rarely look through it.

Paper Diary Week Two

Day 6
Monday 2nd March

I’m sitting here staring at a PDF form that I am supposed to print out, fill in and sign. How on earth am I going to manage this??? I’ve attempted to copy and paste it into a word document but this just results in the formatting going mad and in no way solves how to sign it without printing it. I really can’t see a solution but it seems so early in my pledge to do this. I guess I shall just have to placate myself by thinking that if I had got the company to send me a hard copy it would be even worse, not only would there be the paper of the form its self but also two envelopes. With luck, they might take a scanned version of this form which would mean only using one sheet of paper and no envelope at all.

Day 7
Tuesday 3rd March

The post keeps coming in. Why is it some companies seem to spew out an endless amount of material. We are a Mac based office, we have never allowed a PC to darken our doors, yet I find myself on the Dell mailing list . How do you unsubscribe from the torrents of post that they and others send? It seems to be a lot harder than unsubscribing from an email list and infinitely more annoying, imagine the cost to the environment of all this unsolicited paper being sent out everyday.


Day 9
Thursday 5th March

I’ve signed up to the free trial of a programme called ‘Receipt Wallet’ and have been really enjoying playing with it this afternoon. The general gist of it is that you can scan receipts and invoices and also import others as PDF files, this should eliminate any need to print them. You then add information to each of the scanned documents such as the date, how much the invoice is for and what tax is due on it. The programme then files it for you. It’s just a very clever very straight forward way of ordering your receipts and should make the book keepers job a lot easier. The one disadvantage so far is that it doesn’t recognise word files or web archives so it can be a bit of a pain converting everything to PDF or… even worse for my PayPal receipts copying and pasting them into word and then converting to a PDF. I have to say though you do feel ultra organised when you can see each receipt in it’s place with all the information relevant easy to access. I was worried that once I had scanned the files they would be in some weird format that I wouldn’t be able to get at after the trial had ended but to my delight, they were all there in a nice folder partitioned by date. Surprisingly, to me at least, the software only costs 40 dollars so I am tempted to make the investment. I’ve another 15 days to think about it though.

Other than that it’s been quite uneventful, my desk still looks lovely and neat although a coffee pot, a mug and a digital camera are strewn across it now, it seems I have a need to clutter up the space one way or another. I also seem to have put the ‘In tray’ on the long finger as well as inputting info from the index cards… I guess I’ll just have to save them for another day that seems to be unremarkable in a paper sort of way.

Day 10
Friday 6th March
No post today so I managed a completely paper free day in every way. Tomorrow I am attending BizCamp Dublin, I have downloaded the schedule onto my iPod so I can avoid having to pick up a paper one when I arrive. I’m hoping that the slow typing speed on the iPod will be just quick enough to make good notes during the day.

Paper Diary Week One

Day 1 Wednesday 25th February (Ash Wednesday)

Today I walked into the office and looked at the piles of paper for the last time. For the next 47 days we shall be attempting to keep it paper free.

The first thing I did was break the fast. There was an article in the local paper about Feelgood Organic Hampers and our pledge and I wanted to scan it for the Facebook page so it had to be bought, but this with any luck will be my first and last slip on this journey.

We set about emptying our desks of paper, of ridding every nook and cranny of the office of the stuff. There was a lot more work involved in this than I had anticipated. The pile of paper to be dealt with swallowed the floor space before being laid to rest in the recycle bin, which began to grow beyond it's own structure. Eventually we were free of it, no loose receipt or post it note was left. The desks seemed empty and vast. Suddenly there was space and the space left room for clear thinking.

We have replaced post it notes with white boards and notepads with iPods but there is of course some paper we need to keep hold of for the time being. The index card file will need to be added to our computer address book but this will happen slowly over the next few weeks. The biggest challenge ahead is to not allow any new paper in and, more importantly, not to create any paperwork.

I think there may even be enough room for a plant on my desk now, tomorrow I may go and steal one from our hallway.

Day 2
Thursday 26th Feb

I’m beginning to wonder how I managed this last year without my iPod. Software solutions certainly seem to be a big part of living with out paper. Mix this with some more traditional tools such as whiteboards, blackboards and chalk and almost all bases are covered. I guess it could work out quite expensive if you threw yourself into software entirely. My computer, only 2 years old already creaks and grinds when it has to cope with the many programmes I keep open in order to deal with our Lenten pledge.

What I would love at the moment is a pocket sized wetwipe board. I am really missing my little moleskin notebook and there are times when I just want to scribble something down and using the iPod can seem like a chore. If anyone has one or wants to invent one you’ve got a customer here!

I have managed to use no paper at all today, although there is still some in my in tray to dispense with. I’m about to outsource my book keeping and I’m wondering how they will react to me insisting on either emailing them everything or submitting it on CD. I’m a bit torn over the idea of burning stuff to CD which could potentially be far worse from the environment than the paper alternative.

Day 3
Friday 27th of Feb
My first challenge of the day arrived in the post. A price list and brochure of new products from one of our suppliers. We do need this piece of paper but there must be an alternative. The solution was to set up a standard email response so that in future we can respond immediately, asking suppliers to send information by email. Of course the trick is to nip it in the bud before they send it, so I shall have to put it on my to do list to contact all my suppliers regarding this.

We also received a paper invoice today. We are new customers to the company involved so we will ensure that all future invoices come by email. We already pay all our suppliers by bank transfer or Direct Debit to avoid the unnecessary use of cheques, envelopes and stamps.

One question that still needs to be addressed is how we are to deal with our Farmers Market pricelist. This document not only allows us to keep tabs on stock but is also a tool to help calculate how much VAT we have collected at the different rates.

This week we are simply using last weeks pricelist, marking up our sales in a different colour. A better solution does need to be found however, the one pricelist can only last so long!

Running A Paperless Office

I am going to try to give up paper for February and am moderating a discussion on the subject on Irish Business Women.com at the moment. I will keep you up to date with my progress on my blog but you can also follow the discussion here.